Friday, November 20, 2009

Staff Book Club Update

The team has completed The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork: Embrace Them and Empower Your Team and it was tremendously beneficial. Over the course of several weeks team morale, cooperation, and productivity has dramatically improved. The book was good overall, but I believe the most important part was the team involvement. We met twice a week with each team member facilitating at least 2 chapters over the course of the book. We had great discussions and wouldn't meet without the entire team present. If you lead a team, I strongly encourage you to start a book club and participate in it with your team.

Another one of the benefits, was the creation of a Team Mission Statement. This came up during the discussion of one of the chapters. We decided to create and publish one of our own. We solicited feedback from the team, received buy-in from our executive sponsor and came to consensus. The result's are now proudly displayed on the wall in each team members cubicle.

Finally, the team was so encouraged with the results from our first book, that we've decided to continue. We will be reading Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit starting in December. This is a relatively short read, 8 chapters, that we will finish after the first of the year due to holidays and vacations.

Team Mission Statement"Leverage team insights, strengths, and competencies to deliver on-time, high-quality, cost effective solutions that provide increased and sustainable value to our business partners while supporting [Company]'s purpose, values, and vision."

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About Me

Information Technology professional with over 25 years of experience. My past IT experience has consisted of management, consulting, sales, application and database architecture and development. I have lead multiple projects utilizing Agile methodologies and spearheaded efforts to educate and implement Agile practices throughout several organizations. I am committed to both personal and professional development.
Currently helping customers realize the value of Microsoft products through professional services.